OMG it's a tier list

[dondon151]

As a person who always send Jill/Zihark to GM either other way (I just find that they would stay when it comes to debates/tier lists), they're not mediocre. They just have to gain about two levels to be at the levels the GMs are. Some of this can be skipped if you paragon Jill up in 3-6, since Zihark is already at a decent level.

2 levels? Are the GMs level 8 in 3-7? Level 10, if we're giving Jill and Zihark more experience than they should be allotted? Jill and Zihark are a lot lower in levels than the rest of the GMs, not to mention that the GMs already have a bunch of viable units competing for unit slots.

Not really. Why would you give CEXP to units who you know that are going to fail? Would you give CEXP to Edward who's pretty much only viable until 1-7, in which Zihark/Tormod/Muriam/Vika are miles ahead better than him? In fact, I'd say giving CEXP to units like Edward (and even Tormod) is a more clear sign of favortism, because despite knowing they're not going to be used later (and therefore you should only level them far enough where they'll be useful), you're still leveling them anyway.

Why are we assuming that units aren't going to be used? In a tier list debate, no character is assumed to be used/not used. Giving Edward the CEXP that he gets from simply being used is not favoritism. If we went according to that logic, then the units who can't fit into the 10 or 12 unit slots per chapter because they're not as good as the rest might as well all be lumped into a collective bottom tier.

Carried off the map. In ways, Leanne getting captured makes your fight easier due to your opponents not having Savior.

Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. If you free Leanne from a captor, can she still act that turn?

This is true, but honestly both ways work. I see no point in debating it as it's a positive for both. But I will say Marcia becomes a better unit if she gets to fight more than Haar, which is good for the CRK chapters.

Marcia should be fighting in 2-P, but quite honestly she needs a shitload of levels to even be viable past part 3. This is a point for Haar.

[Reikken]

If you're not going to use Haar because he gets 2 EXP per kill, then you might as well not use Nealuchi with his 1 EXP per kill, and we all know Marcia and Elincia can't solo the map without significant risk.

Nealuchi's purpose is to weaken the enemies, not to gain exp. If for some reason, you need him to take a kill, then whatever. But generally, Marcia is getting the kills, not him.

EXP issues aside (since they're rather irrelevant), Haar makes the chapter a lot easier when he arrives.

Sure, he can help kill the boss.

but quite honestly she needs a shitload of levels to even be viable past part 3.

That "shitload of levels" is quite attainable, too. After 2-P, she gets 2-3 and 2-E, and then in 3-9, you have two paragon scrolls available, so she's getting one if you're using her in pt 4. And then she's pretty cool in 3-11 due to flying.

Why are we assuming that units aren't going to be used? In a tier list debate, no character is assumed to be used/not used. Giving Edward the CEXP that he gets from simply being used is not favoritism. If we went according to that logic, then the units who can't fit into the 10 or 12 unit slots per chapter because they're not as good as the rest might as well all be lumped into a collective bottom tier.

Your idea of a tier list debate sounds pretty wonky.

The only time crappy units are assumed to be used is when talking about the worth of said crappy unit. Since you can't evaluate someone who's sitting on the bench.

Edited January 17, 2009 by Reikken

[HeroMystic]

2 levels? Are the GMs level 8 in 3-7? Level 10, if we're giving Jill and Zihark more experience than they should be allotted? Jill and Zihark are a lot lower in levels than the rest of the GMs, not to mention that the GMs already have a bunch of viable units competing for unit slots.

Difference in levels =/= Difference in stats.

Jill and Zihark stat-wise are only a little bit behind by the GMs, minus HP.

Why are we assuming that units aren't going to be used? In a tier list debate, no character is assumed to be used/not used. Giving Edward the CEXP that he gets from simply being used is not favoritism. If we went according to that logic, then the units who can't fit into the 10 or 12 unit slots per chapter because they're not as good as the rest might as well all be lumped into a collective bottom tier.

That is no assumption. The fact is Edward is crap and will not be used whether you're trying to or not because he'll fail hard at it. Besides, the point is that Jill getting more kills than so-and-so is not favortism when the mission is still getting done effectively. BEXP is a whole new story, but as far as CEXP goes, it's that simple.

Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. If you free Leanne from a captor, can she still act that turn?

Nope.

[dondon151]

Nealuchi's purpose is to weaken the enemies, not to gain exp. If for some reason, you need him to take a kill, then whatever. But generally, Marcia is getting the kills, not him.

Sure, he can help kill the boss.

Agree with everything here.

That "shitload of levels" is quite attainable, too. After 2-P, she gets 2-3 and 2-E, and then in 3-9, you have two paragon scrolls available, so she's getting one if you're using her in pt 4. And then she's pretty cool in 3-11 due to flying.

Marcia's only semi-guaranteed the Paragon in 3-9 since there's less competition for it, but anyone else can have the Paragon past 3-11. Marcia needs Paragon to be viable while other units can use it to augment their already good performances, which is not a point in Marcia's favor.

She also has 4 chapters starting from level 5 2nd tier while the GMs have 9 chapters starting from level >5 2nd tier before 3-11.

Your idea of a tier list debate sounds pretty wonky.

The only time crappy units are assumed to be used is when talking about the worth of said crappy unit. Since you can't evaluate someone who's sitting on the bench.

But we were evaluating the worth of the crappy unit(s). You said that they fail and don't deserve EXP.

Difference in levels =/= Difference in stats.

Yes, I made this point once in a debate against Mekkah, but as he pointed out, generally FE doesn't let you have your cake and eat it too.

Jill and Zihark stat-wise are only a little bit behind by the GMs, minus HP.

I'd cite arbitrary levels and stuff (like lv 12-14 for Boyd and Mia and lv 6-10 for Jill and Zihark) but the fact remains that the DB traitors are at a disadvantage compared to the GM regulars.

In the DB these two have massive utility for their part 3 chapters while sacrificing some utility in part 4 while with the GMs these two have below-average utility for their part 3 chapters while still achieving only average utility in part 4. They still won't be as good as the rest of your GMs thanks to their lower joining level and stats.

That is no assumption. The fact is Edward is crap and will not be used whether you're trying to or not because he'll fail hard at it. Besides, the point is that Jill getting more kills than so-and-so is not favortism when the mission is still getting done effectively. BEXP is a whole new story, but as far as CEXP goes, it's that simple.

I used Edward once, therefore your argument is false ?_? Edward is crap and is less likely to be used, not Edward is crap and will not be used. Jill will be getting more EXP than Edward because of mobility and defensive advantages, but you can't just "give" Edward's EXP to Jill without applying favoritism, that is, Jill has to go out of the way to get the EXP that Edward would have gotten normally (this is primarily before limitations on unit slots discourage Edward from being fielded). After that, replace Edward with a slightly better unit.

Nope.

Then I'd conclude that one would rather not have Leanne captured because it subtracts two actions from the following turn in exchange for a slightly easier kill.

Edited January 17, 2009 by dondon151

[HeroMystic]

Yes, I made this point once in a debate against Mekkah, but as he pointed out, generally FE doesn't let you have your cake and eat it too.

Okay? Not much of a point here.

I'd cite arbitrary levels and stuff (like lv 12-14 for Boyd and Mia and lv 6-10 for Jill and Zihark) but the fact remains that the DB traitors are at a disadvantage compared to the GM regulars.

I never disagreed with this before, so I agree.

...while still achieving only average utility in part 4...

This little claim is false however. This is the whole reason why Jill/Zihark would be in the GMs in the first place, so they'd be massively good for Part 4.

I used Edward once, therefore your argument is false ?_?

lol.

Edward is crap and is less likely to be used, not Edward is crap and will not be used. Jill will be getting more EXP than Edward because of mobility and defensive advantages, but you can't just "give" Edward's EXP to Jill without applying favoritism, that is, Jill has to go out of the way to get the EXP that Edward would have gotten normally (this is primarily before limitations on unit slots discourage Edward from being fielded). After that, replace Edward with a slightly better unit.

This quote actually doesn't attack my claim whatsoever. In fact in a way you actually agree with me. Lets break this down.

Edward is crap and is less likely to be used, not Edward is crap and will not be used.

Edward is crap. Jill is better. Therefore Jill will be used more than Edward. Edward will stay as crap due to lack of level-ups, while Jill will constantly get better.

Jill will be getting more EXP than Edward because of mobility and defensive advantages...

Correct.

but you can't just "give" Edward's EXP to Jill without applying favoritism, that is, Jill has to go out of the way to get the EXP that Edward would have gotten normally

While in actuality Jill will be getting more EXP anyway. On the contrary, Edward would actually have to go out of the way to get the EXP that he needs in order to stay good (if he's good in the first place, which he's not).

After that, replace Edward with a slightly better unit.

Zihark says hi. You can immediately bench Edward when Zihark comes along.

[Progenitus]

Why the hell are we sending Zihark and Jill to the GMs?

For starters, they don't even get significantly more exp than if they simply stayed in the DB, if at all. After they join, they have like a third of 3-7 left, then 3-8, 3-10, 3-11, and 3-E. Unfortunately there's also more units in play since the GMs are gonna be fielding like 8-10 people.

The DB have 3-12 and 3-13, but 3-13 is all laguz who give like twice as much exp than beorc enemies, and there's also fewer fighters around.

And we're stripping the DB of their better units, so they can party with the GMs and the uber d00ds? The GMs have Ike, Haar, Titania, Gatrie, Shinon, the hawks, and Ranulf, along with Mordy/Oscar who aren't bad, and Reyson plays in half the chapters. And then we have Tibarn/Skrimir as NPCs in several chapters who can solo the map too.

Meanwhile, the DB have... Volug. Nolan/Aran/Sothe/Tauroneo/Micaiah/Laura can only do so much. And then we have idiots like Edward and Leo failing over the place. BK only shows up for half of 3-6, and if we're sending Jill and Zihark to the GMs they're getting the kills anyway.

And you guys think that the GMs really need more help with their 10+ uber units who can solo the chapter on their own while the DB have to deal with 40 att tigers and their 140-155 hit (depending on the chapter) raping everything in sight, and their best unit (Volug) gets 3HKO'd at 50ish hit rates?

logic. use it, plz

I also laugh heartily at the idea that Jill will be 20/9 after 3-6. Even if she reaches 20/1 by 3-6, to get 8 levels in that chapter she'd need at least half the kills in the map, and apparently we're trying to use Zihark too so he's going to get the other half. So I guess it's fine if we leave the DB in the dust with this stupid "lol we get no exp", and make their chapters even harder than they already are, while we send Jill and Zihark to the GMs and have them drain from the GMs already small exp pool, just so we have this delusion that they'll perform better in part 4 where all the laguz royals hang out anyway?

[Reikken]

Why the hell are we sending Zihark and Jill to the GMs?

<Paperblade> 3-7 is a swamp, 3-8 has lava and hill-things that he can canto out of/fly over, 3-11 he can fly over holes/block them) where any loss he has to assholes with better stats like Gatrie and Titania are compensated for by the fact that he beats them down on mobility in most of the chapters (Horses get beat down to foot unit move by thickets, can't cross swamp/thickets, which just increases Haar's advantage). Jill has this, but oh wait...

<Reikken> "but oh wait..." Jill can go to these chapters, too.

It's not about exp

And you guys think that the GMs really need more help with their 10+ uber units who can solo the chapter on their own while the DB have to deal with 40 att tigers and their 140-155 hit (depending on the chapter) raping everything in sight, and their best unit (Volug) gets 3HKO'd at 50ish hit rates?

<HeroMystic> If you let your allies do most of the work, which is bad for the DB when your allies fail hard next chapter and none of the DB is doing so hot, especially Sothe. So why take Jill over to the GM and make her a... slightly sub-par unit when she can stay with the DB and be an invaluable one?

<Reikken> I'm not saying it's always necessarily the best course of action, but it's certainly a viable option. Having two options is clearly an advantage. It'll make 3-13 harder, but the chapters they're in are now easier.

While these chapters are probably easier than 3-13, it's also not possible to make 3-13 go any faster, but these can be sped up. So that may be a better course of action.

and either way > only one way

I also laugh heartily at the idea that Jill will be 20/9 after 3-6. Even if she reaches 20/1 by 3-6, to get 8 levels in that chapter she'd need at least half the kills in the map, and apparently we're trying to use Zihark too so he's going to get the other half. So I guess it's fine if we leave the DB in the dust with this stupid "lol we get no exp", and make their chapters even harder than they already are, while we send Jill and Zihark to the GMs and have them drain from the GMs already small exp pool, just so we have this delusion that they'll perform better in part 4 where all the laguz royals hang out anyway?

<Reikken> 8 levels in 1-E and 3-6 doesn't sound unreasonable to me. 3-6 especially is rich in exp. The enemies give loads of exp, and you have 46 kills and liek 5 units killing them.

<dondon151> Jill's promoted by 1-E? Jill has 1-6 and 1-7 to gain 6 levels; I don't think so.

<Reikken> 1-6 has two parts, and you can get another level or so off bexp. 1.7 lvs per map is quite feasible. Just don't feed kills to fail units or unnecessarily give kills to Sothes and such.

Edited January 19, 2009 by Reikken

[HeroMystic]

I lol'd when I saw Volug was the best unit.

[Progenitus]

It's not about exp

Then why exactly are we sending them over? They're certainly not performing any better than half of the GMs around. The only chapter Jill would be worth anything in is 3-11. Zihark would be decent but I fail to see how he'd be better than someone like Ike or Haar or Titania.

While these chapters are probably easier than 3-13, it's also not possible to make 3-13 go any faster, but these can be sped up. So that may be a better course of action.

and either way > only one way

Like the GMs really need help from jill and Zihark when they have 10+ units capable of soloing chapters already.

Oh wait... I fail to see how Jill and Zihark can make GM chapters go faster, unless your entire team is composed of units like Lyre.

So what if two ways > one? If the second way is completely stupid and serves no purpose at all, it means nothing. It's like saying "Reyson can chant, and also attack with magic cards". Who cares about that? his chant is 9001 times better than his attack, so he's never going to attack with magic cards anyway.

<Reikken> 8 levels in 1-E and 3-6 doesn't sound unreasonable to me. 3-6 especially is rich in exp. The enemies give loads of exp, and you have 46 kills and liek 5 units killing them.

<dondon151> Jill's promoted by 1-E? Jill has 1-6 and 1-7 to gain 6 levels; I don't think so.

<Reikken> 1-6 has two parts, and you can get another level or so off bexp. 1.7 lvs per map is quite feasible. Just don't feed kills to fail units or unnecessarily give kills to Sothes and such.

You missed the point.

Why should we make the DB chapters harder by having Jill absorb tons of their exp and then ship her to the GMs? This just loops back to the previous point; it's a stupid idea to ship them over to the GMs.

I lol'd when I saw Volug was the best unit.

Disprove me. Go and try.

Edited January 19, 2009 by smash fanatic

[Paperblade]

<Reikken> "but oh wait..." Jill can go to these chapters, too.

It's not about exp

Jill/Zihark going to those chapters means that I have fewer units in the DB and doesn't noticeably increase my performance in the other chapters because I already have Ike/Titania/Oscar/Gatrie/Shinon/Ranulf/Ulki/Janaff/Haar/Mist in addition to the CRKs in 3-11 and 3-E as well as Reyson/Leanne and "eh" units like Nephenee/Mia/Mordecai/Boyd.

Meanwhile the DB has Volug/Nolan and arguably Aran/Tauroneo/Sothe. Micaiah plays healbot and everyone else is only going to be fielded if they're giving out a support.

The GM has so many good units that you can't use all of them. The DB has so few good units that you want to use every single one to the best of their abilities.

By the way, even sending Jill over still gives Haar an advantage: By giving Jill EXP and then sending her to the GMs I'm hurting the DBs in 3-12/13. Haar doesn't need me to meticulously set up kills for him in Part 2 to make him not crap.

While these chapters are probably easier than 3-13, it's also not possible to make 3-13 go any faster, but these can be sped up. So that may be a better course of action.

Incorrect, you can kill Ike to immediately end the chapter. It's a pain in the ass to do, but since Ike has fail Res and you just got a Sleep staff, it's entirely possible and made easier by not having underlevel'd pieces of crap plus Tauroneo, Volug, and Sothe.

and either way > only one way

The only way this would be the "best" course of action is if I'm using like 8 DB units and only like 4 GM units, but that goes against your theory that people like Edward are garbage that should never be used because there simply aren't enough worthwhile DB units in Part 3 where sending 2 of them to the GMs would be overall more beneficial unless the GM units I'm fielding aren't particularly amazing, because the GMs are just so much better than the DBs that it's not even funny.

<Reikken> 8 levels in 1-E and 3-6 doesn't sound unreasonable to me. 3-6 especially is rich in exp. The enemies give loads of exp, and you have 46 kills and liek 5 units killing them.

46 kills and 5 guys means that you'd be getting like 80EXP a kill. Maybe if you're giving Jill Paragon and throw her a few extra kills, but that opens a whole new can of worms considering she gets 2HKO'd by Tigers and 3HKO'd by Cats and can't one round anything without Beastfoe.

<Reikken> 1-6 has two parts, and you can get another level or so off bexp. 1.7 lvs per map is quite feasible. Just don't feed kills to fail units or unnecessarily give kills to Sothes and such.

Who exactly are the fail units? Everyone who's not Jill or Zihark?

The fact that you're assuming that being able to send Jill over is an advantage to her in Part 3 means we're assuming that she's better than a fair number of the GMs (and according to the assumption that crappy units don't get used or are used very rarely, that means she's better than GOOD GMs, not crap like Lyre and Rolf and Ilyana) to the point where dropping one of them for Jill is a significant enough improvement to outweigh the fact that not only did she get 15 levels in 5 maps (more than I've ever seen as a serious estimate for any unit on Hard Mode ever) but the rest of the DB is now floundering around in 3-12 and 3-13.

This means that going this route has to not completely fuck over the Dawn Brigade IN ADDITION to proving that Jill is going to be 20/9 after 3-6 (and after getting 8 levels in 3-6 you might as well just keep her in the DB since she's probably going to get 8 more in 3-12 and 3-13) AND show that she's a significant enough improvement over GOOD GMs that losing that GM unit in Part 3+4 due to Jill taking his job is worth throwing all that freaking EXP at Jill in Part 1 when Haar was doing the opposite and setting up kills for Marcia in Part 2 because he's so awesome he didn't need the EXP so that Marcia could be halfway usable in Part 3 after we threw Paragon on her and fed HER kills.

[Reikken]

Then why exactly are we sending them over? They're certainly not performing any better than half of the GMs around. The only chapter Jill would be worth anything in is 3-11. Zihark would be decent but I fail to see how he'd be better than someone like Ike or Haar or Titania.

Like the GMs really need help from jill and Zihark when they have 10+ units capable of soloing chapters already.

Oh wait... I fail to see how Jill and Zihark can make GM chapters go faster, unless your entire team is composed of units like Lyre.

ah haha

They don't need to be better than the best units, or even on par with them, to be speeding things up. They only need to be better than the last two picks.

Jill is probably most comparable to Ulki. She, at 20/9 vs base Ulki, has offense and mobility about equivalent to Ulki's (except against swordmasters, since they're too fast for Jill), and while her avoid and hp are lower, her avoid is still quite high, and def is higher, and she doesn't ph34r crossbows. She has no problem with thunder mages either. Ike's authority stars means thunder magic is a joke against her avoid. She does, however, depend on being in support range to have that high avoid. And Ulki has transformation issues. Then Jill gains levels and str faster than Ulki gains atk from supports. Ulki doesn't gain exp for a long time.

Compared to Mia..

On offense, they have the same atk (assuming +2 atk from supports for Mia and Mia at 20/15 (is that too high?)), and Mia has spd to double swordmasters and has +10 crit from class. If Mia supports Ike/Oscar, they have the same avoid, and Jill has about 6 more def. If Mia is supporting wind/dark/thunder, Jill has 15 more avoid and 6/4 more def. And Jill obviously has much better mobility.

Compared to Haar...

Haar does 7-8 more damage per hit (more if supporting a +atk affinity), but he also tends to hit only once, while Jill almost always doubles. He has only about a 50% chance of doubling the uber slow things with 18 AS, but even armors can be fast in this game. Sword ones get up to 20 AS in 3-8, and he has about a 5% chance of being fast enough for that. Axe and lance armors only have 17~19 AS, though. Sages have 18~20 AS, and most other things, like halberdiers and snipers have 20~21. Fortunately (especially for Jill, since her spd is capped, and she's just barely getting the high end things), enemy AS hardly goes up at all from there (30% spd growth is about the average. SMs have 35, halberdiers have 30, snipers have 25 (lolwut), and almost all others have one of those three). Unfortunately for Haar, his spd doesn't go up much either with his crappy growth.

Thus Jill's offense > Haar's.

On defense, Jill wins easily whenever in support range. 117-118 avo + 22 def > 82-89(104) avo + 26-28(26) def (Ike/Oscar support in parenthesis). Haar has more hp, but Jill has more res and crit avo. 3HK'd by magic (2 and something without massive phail atk is generally enough for the kill--not that Jill fares any better, avoid aside, but that's without avoid), 2HK'd by dark mages. And even if he has Nullify, Haar's res and crit avo still suck so much that he can be OHK'd by thunder mages. If out of support range, Haar usually wins defense.

Edited January 20, 2009 by Reikken

[Reikken]

*

3-12 is full of fail enemies, so that's not a problem.

3-13 is a defend chapter, and laguz can't attack across ledges. Plug the ledges with n00b units, and put nonfail units in the few places people can actually be attacked from. Only two spots can be attacked by beast laguz if you do this (Volug and Nolan probably go here), and a few others can be attacked by hawks. Give Leo a Master Seal and a crossbow, and he can slay hawks. If the ballista operators don't kill them first.

46 kills and 5 guys means that you'd be getting like 80EXP a kill. Maybe if you're giving Jill Paragon and throw her a few extra kills, but that opens a whole new can of worms considering she gets 2HKO'd by Tigers and 3HKO'd by Cats and can't one round anything without Beastfoe.

Perhaps you misread? There are 46 kills in 3-6 alone. We have 3-6 and 1-E.

Also, 20/9 wasn't a calculated estimate. Even if 8 levels in those two chapters is a level or two too high, it matters little. 3-7's exp wasn't accounted for either, and Jill is growing over twice as fast as any GM.

Also, you failed to account for the fact that exp doesn't only come from kills in that 80 exp a kill thing. Non-kills (with paragon) would be netting around 30 exp.

More importantly, though still a bit irrelevant to this particular topic, what's the problem with not one-rounding anything without beastfoe? The only one doing any of that without a crit is brave sword Zihark on cats.

Who exactly are the fail units? Everyone who's not Jill or Zihark?

Edward, Meg, Leo, Ilyana, Fiona, and maybe Aran

Then the units that gain jack for exp are Volug, Tauroneo, etc.

Sothe and Zihark may sometimes gain more than 1 exp, but it's still not much.

The only units that don't fail and actually gain exp from enemies are Jill, Nolan, and maybe Aran. That's not a lot to distribute exp over. So you're obviously biasing kills towards these units whenever you can help it. Now, there's no going out of the way to set up kills or any crap like that. It's not like they're getting nearly every kill on the map. To be promoted by 1-E, Jill is getting 20-25% of the kills in those 3 chapters.

[dondon151]

Okay? Not much of a point here.

This means that units with a level disadvantage will have lower stats. Maybe this isn't the case with the really crappy prepromote, but when comparing Jill and Zihark to units in the GMs, this definitely holds true.

This little claim is false however. This is the whole reason why Jill/Zihark would be in the GMs in the first place, so they'd be massively good for Part 4.

No, it's true. They come with a level disadvantage and they reach part 4 STILL with a level disadvantage. A majority of the GMs are above average; Jill and Zihark are only average at best.

lol.

You said that Edward will never be used, and this aptly disproves your claim, so I don't see what's lol-worthy of it...

This quote actually doesn't attack my claim whatsoever. In fact in a way you actually agree with me. Lets break this down.

Edward is crap. Jill is better. Therefore Jill will be used more than Edward. Edward will stay as crap due to lack of level-ups, while Jill will constantly get better.

I was attacking your (actually Reikken's) "giving kills" claims. No informed person would assume that Edward naturally gets more EXP than Jill.

While in actuality Jill will be getting more EXP anyway. On the contrary, Edward would actually have to go out of the way to get the EXP that he needs in order to stay good (if he's good in the first place, which he's not).

I didn't say that Edward needs to stay good. I said that it would be more efficient for the team as a whole if Edward gets a kill so that Jill is free to do other things. I was also saying that 1.7 levels per map for Jill is still stretching it.

Perhaps you misread? There are 46 kills in 3-6 alone. We have 3-6 and 1-E.

Also, 20/9 wasn't a calculated estimate. Even if 8 levels in those two chapters is a level or two too high, it matters little. 3-7's exp wasn't accounted for either, and Jill is growing over twice as fast as any GM.

Also, you failed to account for the fact that exp doesn't only come from kills in that 80 exp a kill thing. Non-kills (with paragon) would be netting around 30 exp.

I still have problems with the assumption that Jill is promoted at the start of 1-E as I highly doubt 1.7 levels per map prior to 1-E is a reasonable estimate. I also have problems with assuming that Jill gets Paragon as it can go to anyone else. 3-7's EXP is reduced for the DB traitors depending on how much effort you dedicate to recruiting them (Zihark comes over a few turns in but Jill requires Haar to go out of the way).

Edited January 20, 2009 by dondon151

[Reikken]

I also have problems with assuming that Jill gets Paragon

She was actually assumed to not get Paragon. (as opposed to assuming that she gets it 25% of the time or something)

[dondon151]

She was actually assumed to not get Paragon. (as opposed to assuming that she gets it 25% of the time or something)

Ah, OK, maybe I didn't read enough posts to get all of the information.

I'd also like to add diminishing marginal returns in the case against Jill and Zihark switching over to the GMs :economics:

[Paperblade]

ah haha

They don't need to be better than the best units, or even on par with them, to be speeding things up. They only need to be better than the last two picks.

They have to be better to warrant me hurting Volug/Nolan/Aran's EXP gain due to having to rely more on NPCs as well as level lolleo.

I could've had 2 more GMs for Part 3/4 + slightly lower level Jill/Zihark, but with this strategy we go "Hey Jill's better than Ulki and Mia so she must be top tier" even though Ulki is only in Upper Mid and Mia's already below Jill.

Jill is probably most comparable to Ulki. She, at 20/9 vs base Ulki, has offense and mobility about equivalent to Ulki's (except against swordmasters, since they're too fast for Jill), and while her avoid and hp are lower, her avoid is still quite high, and def is higher, and she doesn't ph34r crossbows. She has no problem with thunder mages either. Ike's authority stars means thunder magic is a joke against her avoid. She does, however, depend on being in support range to have that high avoid. And Ulki has transformation issues. Then Jill gains levels and str faster than Ulki gains atk from supports. Ulki doesn't gain exp for a long time.

There are 2 enemies on the map that OHKO Ulki. Everyone else has 0 Hit (even if they have Best Bio and Ulki has Neutral most will still have 0), save some Swordmasters that do 5 damage with like 15 displayed hit and some Halbs that do like 6 damage with 10 displayed hit.

Septimus could have Best Bio and Ulki could have Worst and Septimus would still have 0 Hit on Ulki.

"Quite high". When out of support range Jill loses Avoid to base level untransformed unsupported Ulki by 8. So you threw all that EXP and gave her an A Support with bloody Earth, and she still loses to base Ulki.

When he's transformed and she's in support range, he wins Avoid by 16. Also, Jill doesn't win Defense.

19.9 + 2 from Support gives her 21.9.

Ulki's base transformed is 22. Now before you go "but she gains levels faster", Ulki is unsupported and he has kickass Water, so he gets more Defense just from transforming.

Additionally, Ulki has lollaguz weapons, so he gets +5 Attack the second he gets S Strike. For reference, that's 70 attacks, or 35 rounds of combat transformed because he doubles everything. Jill needs 11 levels to get +5 Attack.

Jill also has lolspeedcap so her Speed won't improve while enemy Speed might go up to 22 on occasion, so her borderline becomes borderline. Ulki doubles everything for the rest of the fucking game at base level so the only thing he gives half a shit about is more Attack.

Jill needs to get levels because Ulki beats her in every single defensive stat unsupported at base level and then laughs in her fucking face because he also has 36 Attack, 1.7 higher than what she has with the Steel Poleaxe. Oh, and the Steel Poleaxe has 20 weight, and she has 19.3 strength. So she actually has 23.3 Speed (she averages 24.3 at 20/9), so she's not even doubling unless you forge her a Steel Axe that's going to cost like twice as much as what normal weapons cost.

"but Brave Axe"

Sorry, we're not in DB-land anymore where the only other Axe user is Nolan who has Tarvos. Gatrie, Haar, Titania, and even Boyd want the Brave Axe, and unlike Jill, most of those people are badasses and beat her by 7+ Strength, which is 14 extra damage before the enemy can even counter.

For what it's worth, Ulki has superior Adept activation rate by like 11% and is like 2 levels away from Tear, which is also proc'd from Speed.

On offense, they have the same atk (assuming +2 atk from supports for Mia and Mia at 20/15 (is that too high?)), and Mia has spd to double swordmasters and has +10 crit from class. If Mia supports Ike/Oscar, they have the same avoid, and Jill has about 6 more def. If Mia is supporting wind/dark/thunder, Jill has 15 more avoid and 6/4 more def. And Jill obviously has much better mobility.

Mia gets 2HKO'd by pretty much every non-SM for the entirety of Part 3, and her Attack is so bad that she can be using a Killing Edge, get 2 Adept activations and a Critical and still only borderline one round a 3-2 Dragonmaster. And that's on Normal, where she also has WTA. The only person who has lower attack than Mia that we'd actually maybe be using (lollyrelollethe) is Neph.

Comparing Jill to Mia is a pretty bad move because Mia's a pretty bad unit until she gets to third tier and there are easily more units better than Mia in the GMs that I can field in most maps.

Beating Mia in durability is like beating Mordecai in Speed: No one cares.

However, Mia doubles everything forever while Jill... doesn't.

Haar does 7-8 more damage per hit (more if supporting a +atk affinity), but he also tends to hit only once, while Jill almost always doubles. He has only about a 50% chance of doubling the uber slow things with 18 AS, but even armors can be fast in this game. Sword ones get up to 20 AS in 3-8, and he has about a 5% chance of being fast enough for that. Axe and lance armors only have 17~19 AS, though. Sages have 18~20 AS, and most other things, like halberdiers and snipers have 20~21. Fortunately (especially for Jill, since her spd is capped, and she's just barely getting the high end things), enemy AS hardly goes up at all from there (30% spd growth is about the average. SMs have 35, halberdiers have 30, snipers have 25 (lolwut), and almost all others have one of those three). Unfortunately for Haar, his spd doesn't go up much either with his crappy growth.

This would all be well and good if Jill actually 2HKO'd like Haar does.

35 Attack only 2 shots Swordmasters and Sages, and unfortunately Jill's cap sucks dick and she doesn't double SMs without the Brave Axe, which leaves Sages, which have ~50 hit against her without Zihark being nearby.

Jill also loses AS until like 20/11 from the Steel Poleaxe, so we'd have to forge her a super special awesome Steel Axe to keep her from sucking dick for a couple chapters, since Haar with the Brave Axe and an Attack Support runs around one rounding pretty much everything that isn't a General (and even then he leaves them with like 14HP).

Thus Jill's offense > Haar's.

Jill's offense if she's like 20/11 with the highest attack for a "normal" axe (read: not +5 Might Steel Axe, Brave axe, etc.) > Haar's vs. an enemy type that has 1-2 range so she'll at best be killing one per turn since with the Hand Axe she can't 2HKO them in 3-8 anymore until she's like 20/13 or so.

If Jill is slightly RNG screwed she's freaking terrible at offense. If Haar is slightly RNG screwed he smacks 40HP for 23 damage instead of 25.

On defense, Jill wins easily whenever in support range. 117-118 avo + 22 def > 82-89(104) avo + 26-28(26) def (Ike/Oscar support in parenthesis). Haar has more hp, but Jill has more res and crit avo. 3HK'd by magic (2 and something without massive phail atk is generally enough for the kill--not that Jill fares any better, avoid aside, but that's without avoid), 2HK'd by dark mages. And even if he has Nullify, Haar's res and crit avo still suck so much that he can be OHK'd by thunder mages. If out of support range, Haar usually wins defense.

There are 6 Druids in the entire game, and the 2 that we care about deal like 66% of Jill's HP.

That aside. I think saying "more HP" is a bit of an understatement. Jill doesn't hit Haar's base HP until she's 20/20/8, and at 20/9 she has a piddling 33.

Haar's going to be beating that by like 14-15, which is a nearly 50% increase. 31 Attack Halbs in 3-8 4HKO Jill and 10HKO unsupported Haar. With a Defense support that moves to something ridiculous like 16HKO at which point you're basically having Haar solo the map and everyone else can go do whatever they do in their spare time.

Additionally, 3-8 has the added pain of the lava terrain's set 10 damage (and since it's indoor it's more difficult to canto out of them) fucks Jill over even more than it does Haar.

3-12 is full of fail enemies, so that's not a problem.

3-13 is a defend chapter, and laguz can't attack across ledges. Plug the ledges with n00b units, and put nonfail units in the few places people can actually be attacked from. Only two spots can be attacked by beast laguz if you do this (Volug and Nolan probably go here), and a few others can be attacked by hawks. Give Leo a Master Seal and a crossbow, and he can slay hawks. If the ballista operators don't kill them first.

Except that getting Leo to 10 is pretty difficult considering how terrible he is and potentially spending 10k to buy him a seal if you don't have Sothe go out of his way to land on specific squares to get the Seal (and if you're using 1 extra person out of Nolan/Jill you'd have to buy one anyway to save the EXP). Additionally, this goes back to the idea that you're sacrificing Nolan and Volug's usability in Part 4 to increase Jill's position on the tier list, since if Jill goes with the GMs half the time, Nolan and Volug get less EXP from having to rely more on on the NPCs as well as getting Leo to promote.

Perhaps you misread? There are 46 kills in 3-6 alone. We have 3-6 and 1-E.

Even doubling those numbers that would still be about 20 kills, less than half of which are Laguz.

Also, most enemies in 1-E, even with her at 20/1 with a +2 Def support, will 3HKO her. Mages borderline 2HKO (Thunder Mages deal like 25 damage to her 29HP). That's pretty bad.

Also, 20/9 wasn't a calculated estimate. Even if 8 levels in those two chapters is a level or two too high, it matters little. 3-7's exp wasn't accounted for either, and Jill is growing over twice as fast as any GM.

Actually, it matters quite a bit.

At 20/7 she drops to 18.4 Strength and 23.6 Speed, which means that no, she's not doubling, and on top of that, her attack is even worse than it was before, to the point where you might as well just not use her.

33 Attack with a Steel Poleaxe means she's 3HKOing SMs, and with a Steel Poleaxe she has like 22 Speed, which is less than 1 better than Haar's.

So she gains EXP twice as fast: So what? She still has to deal with a few chapters of suck and fail, and for all that trouble I get a unit with about 5 more Defense than Mia, the unit Jill is already next to on the tier list (assuming the first post tier list is the most recent, which I'd think it is since the post was edit'd today).

Also, you failed to account for the fact that exp doesn't only come from kills in that 80 exp a kill thing. Non-kills (with paragon) would be netting around 30 exp.

30EXP? Maybe on Normal Mode.

More importantly, though still a bit irrelevant to this particular topic, what's the problem with not one-rounding anything without beastfoe? The only one doing any of that without a crit is brave sword Zihark on cats.

Because other units like Volug and Sothe can, and then people like Nolan and Aran beat her in durability and effectively tie offense.

Edward, Meg, Leo, Ilyana, Fiona, and maybe Aran

Then the units that gain jack for exp are Volug, Tauroneo, etc.

Sothe and Zihark may sometimes gain more than 1 exp, but it's still not much.

Volug gets Strike rank from attacking.

The only units that don't fail and actually gain exp from enemies are Jill, Nolan, and maybe Aran. That's not a lot to distribute exp over. So you're obviously biasing kills towards these units whenever you can help it. Now, there's no going out of the way to set up kills or any crap like that. It's not like they're getting nearly every kill on the map. To be promoted by 1-E, Jill is getting 20-25% of the kills in those 3 chapters.

Except that Jill has doubling issues without getting levels ASAP and if she gets even slightly unlucky with the RNG she's going to be terrible. And again, on the subject of Haar vs. Jill:

Haar is a badass. Haar gains levels slowly because he doesn't need to get 13 levels in 5 chapters or whatever Jill's getting now. Haar can sit there and baby underlevel'd d00ds like Marcia and Neph and Mia, because he's like Seth and FE9 Titania and doesn't need liek a fifth the kills to be useful later. Meanwhile Jill's like "Shit I need EXP and to be at least average or I'm going to suck dick". Haar is more reliable, even if Jill's average because he kicks her ass in HP by liek 15 and Defense by like 6. I can trust Haar to not be a fuckup, whereas with Jill if she gets a few unlucky levels it was a bunch of wasted EXP because she does shit damage and won't double. Similarly, if Jill gets hit 2-3 times by unlucky RNGs she's fucked because she's an avoid tank, whereas if Haar takes 2-3 hits he's like "lol I still have more HP than you have max". Jill is a risky investment, Haar is not. That's why Haar is Top Tier, because he and the other badasses up there can be trusted to beat the shit out of everything they see (or in Reyson's case, allow everyone else to beat the shit out of everything they see twice as fast). Jill might be able to beat the shit out of everything she sees a bit better than Haar, or she'll get the shit beaten out of her.

[Vykan12]

ah haha

They don't need to be better than the best units, or even on par with them, to be speeding things up. They only need to be better than the last two picks.

Even supposing they are better than the last 2 picks on the GM’s line-up, they are hurting the DB’s efficiency by a far greater magnitude through their departure. I suppose it could be argued that the 3-13 turn count wouldn’t change (aside from pursuing Ike, but that’s unlikely), but having them leave makes it more difficult to complete that chapter in a safe manner, thus them leaving causes strategic inflexibility that didn’t otherwise exist, hence a negative. As for 3-12, the enemies aren’t quite as lolworthy as you claim, particularly the promoted generals. With only Volug, who has no laguz stones, Nolan and Tauronoeo, who needs at least 4 more speed to double generics, as the people powering your offence, you’re definitely losing turns with the absence of Jill/Z.

Jill is probably most comparable to Ulki.

Are you out of your mind?

Jill lv 20/9 (A Zihark, steel poleax): 33 hp, 34 Mt, 19 skl, 24 spd, 22 luck, 22 def, 13 res, 135 hit, 115 avo

Ulki lv 28 (A Strike): 59 hp, 36 Mt, 34 skl, 36 spd, 25 luck, 22 def, 20 res, 198 hit, 132 avo

Ulki completely destroys Jill statistically at the generous level you gave her, and he’s only at base level and unsupported.

She, at 20/9 vs base Ulki, has offense and mobility about equivalent to Ulki's (except against swordmasters, since they're too fast for Jill)

Actually 24 AS is pretty borderline. Most of the enemies in 3-7 have 20 AS, some of the warriors even have 21 AS, so Jill can’t double them. And the enemies in 3-7 are actually below average compared to most other part 3 enemies.

and while her avoid and hp are lower

Understatement considering it’s 26 hp and 17 avo we’re talking about.

her avoid is still quite high

Agreed.

and def is higher

Actually it’s tied.

and she doesn't ph34r crossbows.

What’s your point? Ulki isn’t 1HKOed by crossbows, in fact getting him hit by crossbows is probably ideal for his offence since nothing else has any chance of hitting him, meaning he can make incredible use of wrath. Plus, he can probably heal with an herb or perhaps even a vulnerary and stay within wrath range, while not risking dying if somehow an enemy manages to hit him despite having like 10 display on him. Really, the odds of Ulki getting hit by a crossbow (they have ~30-40 display) compounded by a generic enemy hitting him all on the same turn is virtually nonexistent. Plus, it’s a situation easily worked around because of how few crossbow users there are per level, as well as the existence of nullify.

Jill, on the other hand, has to fear about twice as many thunder mages as Ulki does crossbows, and risks a much higher hit rate against the average enemy, plus gets hit pretty hard by other mage types as well. So, she’s easily less durable than him.

Then Jill gains levels and str faster than Ulki gains atk from supports. Ulki doesn't gain exp for a long time.

I’d contend that’s not true, since Ulki not only gains a fast +2 atk from a Janaff support (and +3 def and res, and +8 avo, but that's besides the point) but also strike levels rather quickly. Since 3-7 has a pre-set turn limit and you won’t even reach half the enemies in time, Janaff and Ulki are free to go attack whatever the please off in the distance, which alone already gets their strike level to 33-50% of the way towards S. It certainly helps that they double everything and have high mobility, so I could see them hitting SS as early as mid-part 4, at which point they have >50 Mt, which is comparable to a 20/7 Ike with the Ragnell.

Also, you didn’t make any mention of adept (they have the best activation rate on the team of any unit in part 3) or tear (gained with 1-2 levels of BEXP, depending on the hawk), which put together, gives them an >80% chance of killing an enemy at neutral biorhythm.

All that >>> Jill, and I lol’ed at the idea of Ulki being upper mid (I think Paperblade said that somewhere).

Edited January 20, 2009 by Vykan12

[Junkhead]

Incredible you have Sanaki on the low tier list :( .

[Florete]

I lol’ed at the idea of Ulki being upper mid (I think Paperblade said that somewhere).

Where should he be and why?

Incredible you have Sanaki on the low tier list :( .

God-awful durability and can't even use staves.

[Mekkah]

Where should he be and why?

Right below Janaff, as you have him, but in High at least, above Tibarn for sure (availability win). I would say above Rafiel too...above Jill for sure, but inbetween Jill and Rafiel there's Mia sitting...Mia wins availability and doesn't have to transform, Janaff and Ulki are better at pretty much everything else. I'd say they're better than Leanne and Nailah as well, with both being only slightly better than Rafiel and Tibarn respectively.

Leaves us with Volug, and I think that's about where I can stop hyping them.

[Florete]

I don't know if I can see Janaff and Ulki > Nailah. They have more pre-part 4 chapters (Their 5 to her 2) but she's a much greater boon to her chapters than they are to their own (Even if they rock), and she's better than them in part 4 as well.

I could actually possibly see Janaff > Nailah > Ulki since Janaff has that Strength lead that (I think) is the breaking point between 1RKOing and 2RKOing part 3 Generals. I still need a bit more convincing.

[Vykan12]

Where should he be and why?

Well pretty much all of high tier needs some re-arranging.

I won’t oppose Zihark and Sothe’s position as Reikken has done that already, but I really cannot see how Shinon is > Titania, or even in high tier for that matter. Titania may lose to Shinon in terms of player phase offence because Shinon can actually double, but she still wins offence overall due to mobility giving her easier access to enemies and being able to have an enemy phase that doesn’t consist of crossbow phail. Plus, at lv --/16, she promotes rather quickly, which gets her enough spd to double part 3 generics, and with her superior strength, she wins offence easily for the rest of part 3. Shinon only starts winning again when the double bow shows up, but that’s only 4-E, which is reasonably short (most agree it has the weight of 2-3 chapters instead of 5).

Leanne and Rafiel are both underrated on the list. I brought up most of what makes FE10 herons win in my Reyson vs Haar debate, and Rafiel and Leanne are basically Reyson with less move, durability and availability, so they shouldn’t be too far separated from him. In particular, I can’t see any of the herons losing to any royals.

Mia is also quite overrated on the list. Currently she’s above Gatrie, someone with much better durability than her. Offence is arguable, but I believe smash has brought up numbers on gfaqs showing that Mia does about as much damage, if not less, than some other GMs do in one hit, and she doesn’t ORKO either way. I can only see her that high by overhyping her adept potential, and there’s so many other people who can make good use of it (Ike/Shinon/Ranulf/hawks/anyone who can double), so I don’t see Mia’s strong use of it as being a major selling point.

I could actually possibly see Janaff > Nailah > Ulki since Janaff has that Strength lead that (I think) is the breaking point between 1RKOing and 2RKOing part 3 Generals. I still need a bit more convincing.

Well I can’t see anyone being between the hawks because they are so close on just about everything. Even if Janaff leads on damage output, Ulki can gain another point of att from supports (eg/ he supports Mordy), he can get +4 str from an energy drop (since stat boosters are best used on laguz for double stat gain), adept/tear is win and so is the crossbow -> wrath/resolve type options. Each option individually might not seem likely, but the chance of Ulki getting just one of these things is pretty high, so Ulki can easily surpass Janaff’s base might of 40 and do just as well as him vs generals, which are a single enemy type in any case.

Then Ulki wins durability, but I made a post on gfaqs as to why Janaff never has to worry about durability himself (2 in fact, this is the first one)

And no, Ulki's avoid is not overkill unless you're giving him an earth support or something. Even then, when you have a weakness to bows, there's no such thing as too much avoid.

Uh, yes it is.

I took some of Int’s HM data from 3-8

Warriors average 39 attack and 118 hit there. Janaff’s avo at base level is 113. If Janaff is getting 4HKOed at 0.55% true hit, how can Ulki’s avo NOT be overkill here?

Meanwhile, Janaff does 46 damage to warriors while Ulki does 38. Janaff kills the enemy cleanly while Ulki’s short by 4 damage.

What seems more significant here?

It doesn’t end there. Halbs average around 130 hit. Zomg fail at Janaff getting 7HKOed at 6% real. As for offense, Janaff does 38 damage, which is actually short of a one round, which means Janaff will get the 38 hp halbs while Ulki’s well into 3HKO range.

Okie, let’s take someone a little more accurate. A swordmaster with a steel sword has 146 hit, so my poor, frail Janaff is facing 22 real. Oh, but wait, their attacks practically tink off of Janaff, doing a hilarious 3 damage to his 57 hp. Wtffail at being 20HKOed with a 1/5 chance of getting hit.

Well how bout them dang archers? Ok, they admittedly 3HKO Tibarn’s eyes, but it’s at only 20 true hit. OMghorrible for Janaff to face a 0.8% chance of dying in 3 hits to his class weakness, especially when he’s constantly facing 3 consecutive archers. Oh yeah, offense. The archer dude has 40 hp, Janaff does 42 damage, Ulki does 38. I think you get the picture by now.

Really, the only case where Janaff is at ANY risk of dying throughout a chapter is crossbow enemies. Okay, the lone 3-8 crossbow d00d has 158 hit, so Janaff is admittedly facing a 41% chance of dying against these buggers while Ulki’s is only 14%, but like I said, these enemies are rare, nullify exists, and most importantly, Janaff’s offensive lead vs everything is the bigger win IMO.

I dunno if they should go above Nailah or not, though I think you’re overrating Nailah a little. She’s indeed win in 1-8 and 1-E, but those chapters can be beaten more easily/efficiently without using Nailah than part 3 chapters can without the hawks since you have the BK/laguz alliance/Rafiel/Volug/Zihark/Sothe/etc powering your offence already whereas the GMs aren’t quite as broken.

As for 4-E, Nailah’s only real advantage over the hawks is not needing a laguz gem, and those aren’t even heavily competed for in the first place due to the existence of 3 of them, the fact that laguz stones/grass still suffices for other laguz such as dragons, etc. Oh, and there’s no point in selling the gems since you have a metric ton of money in the 4-E base, especially if you do intelligent things like selling the balbeirth and rexthunder, assuming you’re not using any mage characters.

Anyway, onto stats:

Janaff lv 32 (A Ulki, SS strike): 59 hp, 55 Mt, 40 skl, 36 spd, 32 luck, 29 def, 19 res, 127 avo

Nailah lv 33 (SS strike): 66 hp, 54 Mt, 46 skill, 38 spd, 35 luck, 32 def, 26 res, 126 avo

I know I didn’t give Nailah a support, but you can see that Nailah isn’t really doing that much better than Janaff. The only thing she’s demonstrably better at is mastery activation (46% savage > 36% tear).

G2g to class, I’ll finish this up later.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Vykan12

[Florete]

I dunno if they should go above Nailah or not, though I think you’re overrating Nailah a little. She’s indeed win in 1-8 and 1-E, but those chapters can be beaten more easily/efficiently without using Nailah than part 3 chapters can without the hawks since you have the BK/laguz alliance/Rafiel/Volug/Zihark/Sothe/etc powering your offence already whereas the GMs aren’t quite as broken.

So...part 1 characters are more broken than the GM's? Riiiight. Let's look at Nailah's chapters:

1-8: Swamp. She, along with Volug and a transformed Muarim, are the only ones capable of using their full move. She easily beats those two in combat, considering even rescuing a prisoner doesn't hurt her combat ability, and there are a lot of reinforcements getting in the way.

1-E: Jarod has three authority stars. That alone is fucking over most of your characters. You also have the Black Knight, but unlike him, Nailah can actually get to most of the enemies in a reasonable amount of time, and the rest of your team has to be careful. Even Zihark and Sothe have trouble dodging and Muarim has transformation to worry about.

As for Janaff and Ulki, they're always competing for slots with the likes of Titania, Haar, Shinon, Gatrie, Mia, Reyson, Oscar, Mist, and possibly Mordecai, Soren, Rolf, Nephenee, and Brom, while Ike and Ranulf are still on the team, Ike being the one with 3 authority stars now. The Hawks are probably better than most of these, but that doesn't mean these are bad characters at all. They can be left behind without too much consequence.

As for 4-E, Nailah’s only real advantage over the hawks is not needing a laguz gem, and those aren’t even heavily competed for in the first place due to the existence of 3 of them, the fact that laguz stones/grass still suffices for other laguz such as dragons, etc. Oh, and there’s no point in selling the gems since you have a metric ton of money in the 4-E base, especially if you do intelligent things like selling the balbeirth and rexthunder, assuming you’re not using any mage characters.

I'll admit it's not a big advantage at all, but considering it is pretty much the reason Caineghis > Giffca, it's enough.

On a side note, I'd say the gems go to Reyson and Giffca first anyway.

I know I didn’t give Nailah a support, but you can see that Nailah isn’t really doing that much better than Janaff. The only thing she’s demonstrably better at is mastery activation (46% savage > 36% tear).

That's also considering Janaff has made it to SS Strike, which he might not have seeing as he needs 150 shots to hit it, and without even giving Nailah a level, which she may easily have gotten 1 or 2. Regardless, it's true she isn't doing much better, but the advantage exists.

Leanne and Rafiel are both underrated on the list. I brought up most of what makes FE10 herons win in my Reyson vs Haar debate, and Rafiel and Leanne are basically Reyson with less move, durability and availability, so they shouldn’t be too far separated from him. In particular, I can’t see any of the herons losing to any royals.

Leanne I can understand, but Rafiel I'm not too sure. He's not very useful in his joining chapter because of the swamp and lack of Canto makes him a liability if he ever can't Vigor four people, which is very possible on almost all of his maps pre 4-E.

Mia is also quite overrated on the list.

I had that feeling myself, but I wanted to wait and see if anyone else thought the same. Although, Reikken said she should be a bit higher so I'd like to see what he has to say on the matter.

but I really cannot see how Shinon is > Titania, or even in high tier for that matter.

Perhaps not > Titania, but I think he's good enough for High tier. There aren't usually a ton of enemies swarming the teamso Enemy phase offense doesn't usually mean as much and his P phase offense, as you said, is great.

Sorry about doing that out of order. I kinda just did it as I thought it.

[Vykan12]

1-8: Swamp. She, along with Volug and a transformed Muarim, are the only ones capable of using their full move.

Your units start spread out, and the only enemies you have to chase after are the ones to the east. Sothe can actually reach the boss on turn 2 if given celerity and is shoved by Muarim and Vika, so reaching all the enemies really isn’t an issue.

She easily beats those two in combat

I’m not saying she doesn’t, though a transformed Muarim has absolutely no trouble killing things. Volug will admittedly have spd issues, though.

1-E: Jarod has three authority stars. That alone is fucking over most of your characters.

This is pretty much cancelled out by support benefits (thunder x thunder = 3 def and 15 avo) while others more than overcome this (earth x earth, for instance).

You also have the Black Knight, but unlike him, Nailah can actually get to most of the enemies in a reasonable amount of time

You can ferry him with Volug or Muarim, and Rafiel vigoring helps too.

and the rest of your team has to be careful.

That depends on who you use. Though, even a wimpy character can take on some of the reinforcements by attacking from atop a ledge.

Even Zihark and Sothe have trouble dodging

Their durability is fine in this level.

and Muarim has transformation to worry about.

All that means is he loses player phases popping grass while still wtfraping anything at 1 range on enemy phase.

As for Janaff and Ulki, they're always competing for slots with the likes of Titania, Haar, Shinon, Gatrie, Mia, Reyson, Oscar, Mist, and possibly Mordecai, Soren, Rolf, Nephenee, and Brom, while Ike and Ranulf are still on the team, Ike being the one with 3 authority stars now.

The Hawks are probably better than most of these, but that doesn't mean these are bad characters at all. They can be left behind without too much consequence.

The hawks are statistically superior to everyone you named. Some of those people are arguably better thanks to being statistically close but obviously having 1-2 range and constant player phase, and that’s about it.

Anyway, just think of it this way. Nailah is marginally better than the hawks in her chapters (9 total, less if you weigh 4-E as <5 chapters) while the hawks have 3 more chapters than Nailah. I don’t like introducing arbitrary numbers into this but supposing Nailah = 90 and Janaff = 80, then (90-80)9 = 90 point advantage that Nailah has, whereas Janaff gets 240 for his extra chapters, edging Nailah out by 150 points. Of course, one could argue until the end of time what the gap between their performance really is, and how valuable extra availability is when you’re an above average unit, so this essentially comes down to a judgment call.

That's also considering Janaff has made it to SS Strike, which he might not have seeing as he needs 150 shots to hit it, and without even giving Nailah a level, which she may easily have gotten 1 or 2.

150 attacks is 75 kills from 3-7 to endgame, or an average of 10.7 attacks per chapter. Considering how good they are, how quickly they reach enemies and the fact that part 3-4 maps have like 50+ enemies, I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

As for Nailah, in my experience laguz royals gain exp half as fast as normal laguz (think it has to do with formshift) and laguz CEXP gain on HM is crap enough as it is, so I doubt she’ll gain more than a level. Though, it won’t really change much in the comparison since her growths are pretty awful (60% hp, 30% str, 15% mag, 20% skl, 20% spd, 45% lck, 30% def, 30% res).

Leanne I can understand, but Rafiel I'm not too sure. He's not very useful in his joining chapter because of the swamp and lack of Canto makes him a liability if he ever can't Vigor four people, which is very possible on almost all of his maps pre 4-E.

Yeah, he’s not nearly as good as he should be in part 1, but he’s very, very useful beyond that. 4-1 is a FOW map so he might only be used on the first turn and then savior’ed, but he gives the necessary push to get your units out there and attack the main body of enemies. And this map is really annoying for prolonging your turn count because of reinforcements showing up where you can’t even see them, so finishing the map before such things happen is imperative. Rafiel makes the biggest contribution to this just from his first vigor, and he can be used more if you have any idea about enemy placement or use torches. In 4-4 he’s once again best used on turn 1 then ferried up to Oliver’s part of the map, where he’s a major help in getting to dispose of all the stationary enemies in that northwest part of the map, and if all your units are too far from the reinforcements, he helps them get there much sooner and hopefully end the map before the reinforcement numbers start to get ridiculous. And in 4-E, he is better than Reyson in low turn count runs, and without a doubt your best unit.

I had that feeling myself, but I wanted to wait and see if anyone else thought the same. Although, Reikken said she should be a bit higher so I'd like to see what he has to say on the matter.

I believe he said that the gap between Mia and Zihark should be less, unless I’m mistaken. That could mean Zihark down more than Mia up.

Perhaps not > Titania, but I think he's good enough for High tier. There aren't usually a ton of enemies swarming the teamso Enemy phase offense doesn't usually mean as much and his P phase offense, as you said, is great.

That depends on playstyle, really. The more you aim for efficiency, the more enemy phase matters since you can only kill as many enemies as you have units on player phase (discounting heron contributions) whereas there’s no limit to kills on enemy phase.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Vykan12

[Florete]

Your units start spread out, and the only enemies you have to chase after are the ones to the east. Sothe can actually reach the boss on turn 2 if given celerity and is shoved by Muarim and Vika, so reaching all the enemies really isn’t an issue.

I'm pretty sure Muarim and Vika aren't close enough to immediately shove Sothe. Besides, Muarim should either be smoking Olivi Grass or rescuing a prisoner.

This is pretty much cancelled out by support benefits (thunder x thunder = 3 def and 15 avo) while others more than overcome this (earth x earth, for instance).

So they are, in essence, left supportless when it comes to avoid, then they're at a disadvantage if they are ever more than 3 spaces from each other. Regardless, even an EarthxEarth support isn't entirely reliable here.

You can ferry him with Volug or Muarim, and Rafiel vigoring helps too.

That's still using up characters and turns. Getting there on your own > gettting there with help.

That depends on who you use. Though, even a wimpy character can take on some of the reinforcements by attacking from atop a ledge.

What about the fact that we're the ones going up?

The hawks are statistically superior to everyone you named. Some of those people are arguably better thanks to being statistically close but obviously having 1-2 range and constant player phase, and that’s about it

Yes, I agreed to that. The point is, those are all great-average characters. The list isn't so big for the DB.

Of course, one could argue until the end of time what the gap between their performance really is, and how valuable extra availability is when you’re an above average unit, so this essentially comes down to a judgment call.

I guess that's what it comes down to. Janaff and Ulki pwn and all, but I personally find Nailah much more useful for her chapters, even though there are fewer, than they are for theirs.

The rest of your post I more or less agree with, or don't disagree enough to feel the need to respond.

Also, does anyone else question Haar's placement? I'm finding it very tempting to move him down.